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Sunday, December 19, 2010

North Korea Goes to the Dead US Soldiers' Remains Strategy

Richardson: North Korea offers to return remains of U.S. troops

By the CNN Wire Staff

December 19, 2010 --

Pyongyang, North Korea (CNN) -- A top North Korean general offered Sunday to help return the remains of several hundred U.S. troops killed during the Korean War, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said.

Maj. Gen. Pak Rim Su told Richardson that the bodies were discovered recently in North Korea.

Richardson, who is meeting with officials in North Korea to help ease tensions in the region, described the offer as a "very positive gesture."

Any returned remains are "better than nothing," Korean War Veterans Association President Bill Mac Swain said. But he noted that there were possible pitfalls.

"I'm worried that what we'll get is a bunch of stuff that we'll never be able to figure out," he said.

Investigators are still trying to identify many of the bodies from more than 200 boxes stuffed with remains and personal items that North Korea sent back to the United States between 1990 and 1994, he said.

"The problem is the bones were scattered in boxes. There were all kinds of different things that made it very difficult for them to even determine how many people were in the boxes," Mac Swain said.

The Korean War ended at midnight on July 27, 1953, after three years of fighting that left millions dead -- including just more than 54,000 U.S. troops, according to the Department of Defense.

More than 8,000 U.S. service members remain missing from the Korean War, according to the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.

For more than four decades, U.S. attempts to persuade North Korea to return additional U.S. remains were unsuccessful.

But between 1990 and 1994, North Korea exhumed and returned what it claimed were 208 sets of remains in 208 boxes.

In 2007, on the eve of preliminary peace talks, North Korea handed over four sets of remains believed to be those of American soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War.

The remains, in aluminum coffins, were delivered by North Korean soldiers to United Nations honor guards during a brief rain-drenched ceremony in Panmunjom on the demilitarized zone dividing the two Koreas. They were recovered in the North's Unsan County, where about 350 Americans are thought to have been killed in fighting between U.S. and Chinese troops shortly after China entered the war on the side of North Korea.

At that time, 209 sets of remains had been returned to the United States; only seven had been identified.

Before 1996, most of the remains excavated and returned by North Korea were in too poor condition to identify. The United States asked North Korea to stop further exhumation until an agreement was made for joint recovery. That agreement gave the United States access to the reclusive communist country to look for evidence of U.S. soldiers killed during the war.

But the U.S. government temporarily suspended such trips into North Korea in 2005, according to the Defense Prison of War/Missing Personnel Office.

Mac Swain, 80, said that finding remains isn't just an issue of statistics and science.

"From my company there's two people that are missing in action. We don't really know anything about them, and this is 60 years later. ... I would like for them to be able to find these two guys," he said.

But North Korea's motives may not be altruistic, Mac Swain said.

"I'm afraid it's more political than it is humanitarian. ... They use our dead to further their gains. That's another way to look at it. ... But we need to find (the missing). We need to bring them home," he said.

Let us humbly recall when the Army was ridding itself of linguists in critical languages due to sexual orientation and the frank stupidity of the military's policy regarding homosexuals was here remarked. Shall we?

What seemed more or less blindingly obvious to many a self-described conservative at the time is not so now, perhaps due in part - I merely suggest - to the changed political landscape upon which repeal has taken place, rather than practical or even cultural considerations.

That this will end up being far more complicated in implementation, far thornier in its consequences, than many an advocate can foresee, I freely grant.

But the military is not so conservative as the general population supposes and has, in its own way and of necessity, some more liberal instincts than the country at large.

But it's humorous in this conext to recall (I think it was) Larry Summers's observation back in the Nineties that the Army, for one, with its everyday obsession with weight and body mass and its scrutiny of official photos - why NOT have the guys photographed in Speedos and the gals in some equivalent - was flirting with homoeroticism.

Below is a complete transcript of Taibbi’s report from the Sunday, December 19, NBC Nightly News:

LESTER HOLT: The WikiLeaks story took another turn today with Vice President Biden’s comments on Meet the Press that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange damaged U.S. diplomacy and put lives in danger with his latest round of leaks. Biden said the Justice Department is looking into bringing charges against Assange, but what about the Army private now in custody who allegedly leaked all those documents to Assange in the first place?

...

MIKE TAIBBI: In grammar school in Crescent, Oklahoma, Bradley Manning was the undersized sax player in the band and a straight A student with all the answers on the quiz bowl academic team.

JORDAN DAVIS, CHILDHOOD FRIEND OF BRADLEY MANNING: He kind of probably made people feel a little stupid just because he tended to use big words.

TAIBBI: Now Manning’s the alleged source of the heart of the WikiLeaks firestorm, an Army intelligence analyst charged with downloading and distributing classified videos and thousands of documents made public by WikiLeaks. Manning was only arrested after he contacted a notorious former computer hacker from California named Adrian Lama. After hearing Manning’s story it was Lama who turned him in.

ADRIAN LAMA, FORMER HACKER: It was the most difficult decision that I've ever made.

TAIBBI: Lama says Manning sought him out because of his reputation as an accomplished computer hacker.

...

LAMA: I regret I had no other choice going forward. I wish that Bradley Manning had talked to me when he was planning it.

"The United States government has never been infiltrated by Communists."

I realize that is has been and that this was properly a grave concern in decades past - a grave concern not actually helped by some of those who went off the deep end and made a political fetish of it - but I think we have passed the Venona heyday and moved on into a more complicated arena.

One last, more direct point. Disclaimer: I've read this blog since its inception and mean this with all politeness.

When gay men and women hear of injustices done to Americans, when they learn of war made upon them with impunity and malice, when they see the faces of acid-scarred women and the terrified, watery eyes of children whose parents have perished to terrorism, to our own mistakes, to the calculated plans of our enemies, what is your response to them? And if you feel it just to deny them the right to serve the only, if ambiguous and controversial, force for good in the world, how can you possibly feel right about such a call?

Nearly every person I know whose served has sexual morays that I do not share. I could not care less what sexuality and perversions my fellow citizens find fun, so long as it avoids obvious red lines. I am not sure why we take exception to homosexuals. Are they really so different that our military not only should do without but also must bar by force of law their participation?

I know the politics of DADT play well in certain areas. But so too do all kinds of divide-and-conquer games that you known are a perennial strategy for Washington, DC. How on earth is it healthy for to allow meanspirited reactionaries a say in what is "proper" service, reducing the complexities of patriotism to a ridiculous sexual binary?

And its not only political strategy that suffers. Intellectually, can't we all affirm that sexuality is complicated. Do we really need to take a bible camp brochure and impose it on the Pentagon?

My dissonances drove my sympathies to the positions you see above. Are you saying you see no contradictions in your own feelings?

Mon Dec 20, 12:21:00 AM EST

Deuce said...I do not want to see anyone barred from service if they are qualified and needed for the purposes of the business of the US military.

I also do not want to see homosexual men do for the US military what they did for the Catholic Church.

Men are different than woman. Homosexual men are different than straight men. Military men are different than civilian men.

A voluntary military should be open to all who want to serve and to all who are qualified by the organization. You join an organization like the USA Military because you want them and they want you.

Don't make the specious argument that it is a civil right, the same as race. That is nonsense and a false comparison. Races are different because of people's origin and evolution. They differ on minor physical attributes. Black men, white men and red men are all men. There is little difference between their character, instincts and behavior.

Small group dynamics is important to military cohesion and effectiveness. If you do not understand the difference between a buddy wanting to save your ass and a buddy who wants your ass, I can't help you understand.

South Korea says it sent jet fighters into the air to deter North Korean aggression as it staged a live-fire artillery drill at Yeonpyeong Island - the same place that was shelled by North Korean artillery during a similar drill last month.

The 94-minute drill concluded Monday afternoon with no immediate response from North Korea, which had warned of "catastrophic" effects if South Korea went ahead with the exercise. The South moved residents of the island into shelters ahead of the drill as a precaution.

A reporter traveling with U.S. trouble-shooter Bill Richardson is reporting that Pyongyang has offered several concessions to ease tensions over its nuclear program. CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer says North Korea told Richardson during a four-day visit that it was ready to have U.N. inspectors return to its Yongbyon nuclear facility.

Blitzer said the North also offered to have fuel rods from Yongbyon moved out of the country and to establish a military commission and a hotline linking the two Koreas and the United States.In New York, the U.N. Security Council met for several hours Sunday trying to find a way to head off the threat of confrontation between the two Koreas but ended its session with no agreement.

Russian U.N. envoy Vitaly Churkin told reporters that Security Council members could not agree on wording of a statement urging the two Koreas to exercise "extreme restraint."

The U.S. ambassador at the U.N., Susan Rice, said most Security Council members wanted a strongly worded condemnation of North Korea's two attacks on the South this year. However, Rice said several nations - presumably including China, North Korea's closest ally - would not agree.

The U.S. envoy also reiterated Washington's view that South Korea has the right to conduct military drills in the Yellow Sea, and has done so without any deception.

Seoul says hostile action by North Korea has killed at least 50 of its citizens this year.

North Korea's November 23 attack on Yeonpyeong Island killed four people, including two civilians, and an explosion on March 26 that sank a South Korean warship in the same area killed 46 sailors. An international investigation concluded the ship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, but Pyongyang has vehemently denied any role in the sinking.

"Small group dynamics is important to military cohesion and effectiveness. If you do not understand the difference between a buddy wanting to save your ass and a buddy who wants your ass..."

Interesting, then, the article you chose from American Thinker, which dealt with broader issues.

I may have served with quite a few lesbians. At least this was suggested, to my surprise, at Huachuca. I hadn't realized any would be interested in the Army. Didn't strike me as very, I dunno, lesbian-ish as occupations go.

And, honestly, it makes me rather sad that you would want to end such a tradition, rather than further it with some...tempered and unique insight...with regard to any young person in your "tribe" who expresses an interest.

For the military, which is necessarily and blessedly concerned with practical matters, it's a privacy issue...

This matter just doesn't register big on my radar, mainly because I am not directly involved. It's an issue (or a problem) for the military and they ought to be given wide discretion in deciding what policies are best for promoting unit cohesion and the capacity to get their job done in the most efficient way possible.

To say that this is a practical as opposed to a political decision, however, is naive. These days every decision made in the military is political, from funding to staffing to payroll and benefits to procurement to handing out cash in paper sacks to our 'allies'.

“….the depth of Pollard’s info that he passed on to Russia (amongst others) was as damaging as the Rosenberg’s was during that era.Devastatingly state of the art. Virtually everything that we knew/know about nukes….” (US Navy nuclear weapons expert exclusive to VeteransToday)

"Why did Israel send this information to Russia, the names of all American intelligence assets behind the Iron Curtain, the exact locations of all NATO nuclear weapons facilities, missile silos and detail on how to defeat America’s defenses from nuclear attack?

America doesn’t openly admit it, but this is exactly what was done, and done with one purpose, a surgical strike on America, starting and ending World War III in hours."

In Scouting an adult leader is not to be talking about how much sex they get, with whom, where and how often is not a topic for discussion. It's not part of the deal. A single man is NOT expected to shared how he got laid over the weekend.

I watched the difference between baseball and scouts, in the travel team for baseball the coaches and players DID talk about who and when what gals the coach did date... They did talk about the gals at hooters.. (this being with a group of 9-10 year old boys)...

Scouts? That is a subject not discussed.

So in theory a male or woman COULD be gay, we'd never know if they KNEW that within Scouts we dont talk about nailing one....

But the gay movement wants to change Scouts, they want leaders to be openly gay, this is not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable for a single straight adult leader to be in a position of leadership talking about how he got laid last weekend...

The gay agenda does not seek equal rights, it seeks, or demands total acceptance as equals.

Sorry but gay "relationships" are not the bedrock of society, they are the exception.

— n , pl -nies1. a body of people who settle in a country distant from their homeland but maintain ties with it2. the community formed by such settlers3. a subject territory occupied by a settlement from the ruling state4. a. a community of people who form a national, racial, or cultural minority: an artists' colony ; the American colony in London

desert rat said...Israel is a perfect fit for 3 of the 4 definitions of a "colony".

colony (ˈkɒlənɪ)

— n , pl -nies1. a body of people who settle in a country distant from their homeland but maintain ties with it2. the community formed by such settlers3. a subject territory occupied by a settlement from the ruling state4. a. a community of people who form a national, racial, or cultural minority: an artists' colony ; the American colony in London

Deuce:I would like to see every conservative pastor and minister strongly admonish their followers to stop volunteering to join the US Military.

In the Espionage Act of 1917, Section 3 made it a federal crime, punishable by up to 20 years of imprisonment and a fine of up to $10,000, to willfully spread false news of the American army and navy with an intent to disrupt their operations, to foment mutiny in their ranks, or to obstruct recruiting.

Amusing the criticism comes from the rat, who talks trends when it suits him dinegrates them when it doesn't.

But plays to fears.

From the man who's understanding of history and national trends comes thru Wiki articles.

21st Century America?

I am perfectly satisfied with 20th Century America. Luckily, I am no longer dependant upon playing the PC game in order to advance my livlihood. I can merely look upon it and shake my head sadly, a fact some find amusing.

"I may have served with quite a few lesbians. At least this was suggested, to my surprise, at Huachuca. I hadn't realized any would be interested in the Army. Didn't strike me as very, I dunno, lesbian-ish as occupations go.

As long as there was some privacy, it wasn't an issue."

Since DADT worked great for you there, and worked great for our kid here, we should trash it and see what happens?

3. westerncanadian As you say, we have hate speech laws in Canada. They are married to our infamous Human Rights Commission. Hate speech laws are like old time witch hunts in that a witch was whomever you said was a witch and hate speech is whatever you say is hate speech.

The criterion for hate/intolerant speech appears to be “if it hurts the feelings of someone who belongs to a recognized group playing in the game of identity politics, then it’s hate speech.” Truth or falsehood of said speech is not relevant.

I think the criterion for the new morality is identical. “If you hurt the feelings of someone who belongs to a recognized group playing in the game of identity politics, then your behaviour is morally incorrect.”

Nowadays a spoken/written/sung opinion – whether informed or uninformed, nasty or nice, true or false – that hurts the feelings of a player of identity politics; self evidently signals a morally incorrect person speaking hate.

At least, that’s what tolerant people say.

December 19, 2010 - 8:37 pm

Gee, and I was falling for the stereotype that all Canadians thought the same, eh.

You guys aren't thinking it through, I believe. It's hard to see the one gay guy that makes it into a rifle platoon causing many problems. That other 40 trigger-pullers will probably be able to handle it.

Thank you for responding. Perhaps my points were too abstract or philosophical in nature. Trish's points re: our purging of precious linguists is more practical: how can the United States reach the utmost level of performance when it allows the regressive, mean-spirited and entirely political DADT policy can reach into our operations and steal personnel?

This is a human resources issue, first and foremost. If you or any pastors or politicians want to spread paranoia and misnomer in the service of "culture," nothing is stopping you and there are surely people who will give you money. If people want to take to the hills because of the an imaginary cartoon where soldiers under fire wish heterosexuality could come to their aid, fine. But let's all agree this crude problem was created by crude politicians. It became a political tool to mobilize liberals and conservatives both. It is not a death knell to the republic and is the very least of the empire's problems.

I see this as mostly a generational issue. The gays you know are not the gays I know, perhaps. There have already been elaborate and powerful campaigns to persuade us that sophomoric derision aimed at sexual differences is kinda lame. And the Catholic Church's problems are something I think only the Catholic Church could create. The Pentagon could make a mess of this too, yes, but it'd be reflective of a profoundly different institution.

And please, this unit cohesion stuff is nonsense, shameless, unabashed nonsense. IMO, this argument is best used by those who have served to assert their credentials over their fellow civilians. "Gosh, I guess I've never been in a firefight, so I won't know how important it is to retain a healthy wariness of homosexuality." How can anyone take that seriously? How can you?

One last point: First responders, police, fire, medics, they all have sexually diverse workforces. This is a result of them employing people, not cartoons, not propaganda posters for bible camps.

And maybe more to the point, sure, if DADT is removed, gay marriage becomes legal. Is that the real objection here? Maybe the old need to talk to the young about coping mechanisms for a changing world...

On June 4, 1986 Jonathan Pollard pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The US government never claimed that Pollard spied for “Russia”. It also never claimed that Pollard spied for the “Soviet Union”. While you have frequently conflated the two, they are not at all the same. Indeed, Russia did not exist in 1986.

I only wish there was some period of enforced silence the proprietors would impose on you each time you spin a lie about Israel or Jews.

As to Pollard, I hope he likes his job and continues doing it for life.

Yehu, there is no question that this is a generational thing, a generational thing being a change and change is neither necessarily good nor bad.

There is no point in personalizing this because that is an emotional argument used by every polemicist. Like it or not this issue IMO is larger than homosexuals in the military. Gays have been there forever and frankly not many people cared because it was not a political issue.

This is all about politics, left versus right and one step forward for the Left to dismantle its nemesis the social conservatives.

I think social conservatives need better issues than defending DADT - at least if they want to get elected. If they play the bumpkin card and lose, well, I hope they eventually learn from it.

In a strategic sense, you're playing the Left's game. Make them play yours. I know this is trite. Education needs gradual and radical improvements in many areas, for instance.

IMO, what we really need is a right-leaning anti-war movement. We need our conservatives to help us dismantle the empire. They're the only antidotes to the military-industrial-congressional complex. No one will trust the left on national security, because they do not think mass protest will scare our enemies. The deference towards the right is not guaranteed, however. Maybe in some bizarro way, your opposition to removing DADT is the beginning of conservatism that is capably critical of the military.

I think social conservatives need better issues than defending DADT - at least if they want to get elected.

You continue to miss the point.

As with most purveyors of PC policies you look at a particular issue and miss the trend.

Deuce has identified the progression a number of times in this stream.

Most soceial conservatives care little about DADT per se. Most could give a shit one way or the others about gays. What we are concerned about is not gays and their allies among the politcal elites trying to change attitudes through persausion, we are concerned about their trying to change attitudes (i.e. thought)though legislation, mandates, and sensitivity trainings.

The objections go way beyond DADT and to an attitude that is pervasive and growing in this country as illustrated by

Doug, do you have any examples of five-alarm infernos in multi-story apartments, where the rescue effort was hurt by female rescuers?

Or firefighters that did not understand the thermodynamics of fuel, plasma and collapsing buildings due to their race?

I anticipate deafening silence on your part.

I used to enjoy the bloodsport of politics, but eventually something clicked that people's lives hang in the balance now. And if you care about improvement, bloodsport becomes a style or storytelling method. It does not become the goal. That seems to be where you're stuck, but that's just my flyby observation.

This is the classic race-baiting nonsense that we heard over the past few decades. This is what the centrist middle class was told to worry about. In a better world, what might they have been worrying about other than the perennial menace of dumb non-white firefighters? I can think of a few things...

Most soceial conservatives care little about DADT per se. Most could give a shit one way or the others about gays. What we are concerned about is not gays and their allies among the politcal elites trying to change attitudes through persausion, we are concerned about their trying to change attitudes (i.e. thought)though legislation, mandates, and sensitivity trainings.

You may care about this issue passionately. As you may soon discover, your critics "not so much", really. Passion and responsibility are so passe and, anyway, buying in would demand more than clever slashing.

One can choose to be a pedophile as in one can choose to commit the act or not. Can one choose what attracts you? I dunno, there are behavioral methods one can try to influence your attractions, but in my personal experience women, and not all of them to be sure, attract me. I don't feel I've made that particular choice. Whether I choose to bed them is another matter entirely.

Ones basic sexuality is probably the matter of nature, with choice having little place.

Battle is an endeavor which consumes all ones wit and concentration. As the Israelis discovered, adding sexual tension (females in line companies) was hurtful to the mission.

Why any of this should matter to Americans is something of a mystery. Indeed, American leaders will spend mountains of cash to avoid victory. Americans have no intention of winning wars. War is bad! Competition is bad! Anger is bad! And winning is the worst, because it proves, without qualification, that one side was superior.

"And Israel must act. Pollard’s unfair, unjustified and discriminatory sentence and treatment are a dismal symbol of Jewish vulnerability. His personal suffering is inhumane, real and unrelenting. He needs us to stand up for him.

And so we must. And so we will. The time has come, against all odds to shout that Pollard must be freed. Now."

No, Caroline, we mustn't. Yonny was/is a greedy little gutter snipe who made every possible effort to sell information to any number of governments, most of them America's allies. That was his undoing. One must stay between the lines.

The last thing Israel needs is Jonathan Pollard on display. There is already enough dis/misinformation floating around, without adding more.

Every Israeli prime minister since Pollard's imprisonment has asked the United States for clemency. Netanyahu had even visited Pollard in prison in 2002 as a private citizen.

Yossi Melman, who writes about intelligence matters for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz told CNN that Israelis feel badly about the entire affair. "There is a general guilt feeling in Israel that it was a stupid operation, that it was wrong despite the temptation because of his access to information, to recruit an American to spy against his own country," but he went on "it is about time to release him because he has been there for 25 years, enough is enough.

Golly, Doug, I can't speak for anyone else but I'd kinda run out of steam. You needed to be up a little earlier. Or later.

I should have stuck with my first point. That is, that years ago the military's (rather Congress') policy was thought stupid and possibly senile by some conservatives, including some here, due in part to personnel shortages and/or service separations in MOSes critical to the war. I believe Blue himself questioned the wisdom of not allowing openly gay individuals to serve. (I am, as always, open to gentle correction.)

Now we have a Democratic president and a Democratic congress and repeal is a full-out assault on social conservatism, such that one could even be compelled to actively work toward the end of one's "tribe's" tradition of military service.

What changed are the political circumstances in which the debate is taking place.

I do believe that.

This is not to say that there aren't very valid reasons for opposing repeal, but that it can be hard to look at an issue from outside of the politics, and the political furor, surrounding it at any given time. It can be difficult to remain, well, aloof from all that. I have much personal experience in this.

In case I forget, have a Happy Christmas, sweetheart.

Or as my daughter has it, a Merry Festivus. And all that might entail.

On Saturday's Early Show fill-in co-host Russ Mitchell saw passage of the tax deal as a possible "turning point for Mr. Obama's presidency" and speculated that it was "perhaps setting the stage for another victory as the Senate takes up the repeal of the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' law."

...

And that's why this tax deal is important because the President said, 'Look, I'm fighting here for the American people and the middle class.'"

Here is a full transcript of the December 18 segment:

8:00AM ET TEASE:

RUSS MITCHELL: Victory on tax cuts and today the Senate is set for a vote that might end the ban on gays in the military. Are we looking at a new era of cooperation?

8:01AM ET TEASE:

MITCHELL: A lot going on today, going to begin the day in Washington DC, where, of course, President Obama had that huge day yesterday, signing the tax cut bill, he also – today the Congress also will take up the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy, we're going to have the latest on that and our John Dickerson's going to be here to sort it all out for us.

REBECCA JARVIS: Yes, a lot to discuss, a lot of historic moves taking place on Capitol Hill.

8:01AM ET SEGMENT:

MITCHELL: Let's begin with our top story, as we told you, big doings at the nation's capital.

...

WHIT JOHNSON: Hey Russ, good morning. Good to see you again. By the way, for the next two years, doesn't matter how much money you make, your taxes will not go up.

I'm not a drink and then eat kind of a person but for some reason at 2:30 am I was craving a cheese hoagie. My daughter ended up driving me home and when I was obnoxious and annoying her for some tortilla chips that she refused to give me she hit a patch of black ice swerved over the road almost hitting a fence and flipping my car. Needless to say I never got my chips and when I went to take the kids to Hershey the next day there was tomato and lettuce all over the back seat of my car.

"American leaders will spend mountains of cash to avoid victory. Americans have no intention of winning wars. War is bad! Competition is bad! Anger is bad! And winning is the worst, because it proves, without qualification, that one side was superior."

On the same subject this morning, I put it more simply to the wife:

"If you TRIED to fuck up the works and sacrifices in Iraq, you could not do a better job of it than "we" have done."

My opionions were formed way before this when I would ask simple questions like:

If Doug had stood up in a sixth grade classroom and launched into a monologue about my sexual preferences, anatomic descriptions of them and why others should be sure to be respectful of them, what would have been the result?

I also remember CLEARLY the promises gay activists made to us two decades ago that they would not proselytize, and certainly NOT proselytize to children.

You mean, Doug: What if this is NOT a human resources issue in any substantive way?

That may be the case.

Are there other grounds for repeal? No doubt.

I merely observed the shift in attitude wrt this issue, then and now.

Because I find it interesting.

We do change our minds about things, see things differently over time - and, yes, are influenced by shifting politics and our own gut sense of things. We are not static in our opinions. Even less, creatures of consistency. Even less, governed by neat rationality.

Well, okay, speaking for myself.

Thinking's a messy business, made messier by the highly politicized, 24/7 noise machine that is the new media.

In my early twenties, before the rise of that media, I had, I dunno, an intellectual crisis, of sorts. Between liberalism and conservatism, there appeared no obvious "right." And how could that be? And isn't that horrible, if true? Isn't that paralyzing, if true?

I meant that life experience and reports from the kid regarding gay Marine boss at his former workplace, and your description of your experience at Fort Huachuca suggest to me that if sexual orientation is not discussed, no problems wrt to said orientation ensue.

Thus, what's the point of causing problems by regularising such discussions?

50% of the televisions in the United States were tuned to the first broadcast of Charlie Brown's Christmas Special in 1965.

Network executives were not at all keen on several aspects of the show, forcing Schulz and Melendez to wage some serious battles to preserve their vision.

The executives did not want to have Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke;[1] the network orthodoxy of the time assumed that viewers would not want to sit through passages of the King James Version of the Bible.

Charles Schulz was adamant about keeping this scene in, remarking that "If we don't tell the true meaning of Christmas, who will?"

"...if sexual orientation is not discussed, no problems wrt to said orientation ensue."

Correct. And I mean, how was I to know anyone was a lesbian (except for that one chick - well, it must've been two, right? - in Basic who was observed in the act in the latrine and sent packing)? I had a sheltered childhood and even now, I don't have highly-developed gaydar.

And would I have cared had I known? NOT as long as I wasn't subject to, for instance, the open shower we had in the WWII barracks in Basic rather than the individual ones I would always have later. And that shower was hard enough to get used to even assuming as I did that every fellow trainee was heterosexual.

And this is what I was getting wrt the privacy issue.

Male and female soldiers don't, for instance, shower and shit together because why?

And how to facilitate the same level of privacy, everywhere, within genders when being openly gay is permitted?

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.